Please let me know if this community is not the best place for this post.
When I was a teenager, and even in my twenties, I used to be quite idealistic, naive, and somewhat radical, believing that all humans have the capacity to be good, and that the only thing preventing utopia where all live in abundance were the historical shackles of national/cultural/religious identities. As in, humans would for sure all get along, if only there were no major reasons for any "us vs them" type thinking.
But the older I get, the more my thoughts on the topic have shifted. My idealism has constantly been worn down by finding out about more and more people who would be happy to fuck over every single other person on this planet if it meant they could get a bit further "ahead" than everybody else. But even on a much smaller scale, after establishing my own family and building my home, at some point I realised that I would personally also be willing to go to extreme lengths if necessary to protect the way of life of my loved ones, including picking up a gun if our neighbouring country decides we should no longer have our freedom - this is something I would have considered "idiotic patriotism" when I was younger. Basically, this means I would also be willing to fuck up the lives of others in order to improve the lives of my family, and I think the same is true for most people.
What I'm getting at is that I think there are lots of reasons that people can have to hurt other humans, ranging from psychotic greed to a strong commitment to close ones. I think this is just human nature. I'm using the word "hurt" here in a very broad sense, including taking advantage of somebody, etc.
If indeed this is human nature, and humans are willing to exploit others to try and improve the situation for themselves and their loved ones, how can communism work? Would we not need to "evolve" to a new stage of humanity first, where people are capable of putting the needs of society above their own desires?
I apologise if this is a dumb question with some obvious answer, I admit I have not read any books on communism and am probably missing some key points.
"Human nature" is a fake concept, especially one that is considered "essential" and eternal of humans. If human nature is anything, then over our 100K year history as anatomical humans it's our nature to live in communitarian tribes with no personal property.
Human behavior and incentives emerge from the economic base - NOT IN AN OVERDETERMINED MANNER, meaning it's not inevitable that all who live under capitalist wage relationships seek to become exploiters and greedy. But what is incentives and rewarded is greedy, shitty, alienating behavior in the absence of true and proper solidarity. When people act the way you suggest they're doing so rationally, now it's true that they would more to gain if they take the proverbial leap of faith and taking part in a socialist revolution but that prospect is scary because it implies a potential loss without gain and things aren't bad enough for enough people for them to feel the risk is worth the reward yet.
In my day to day encounters with people, I'm reminded of the enduring power of love and small acts of kindness and solidarity that power our daily lives even in this hellworld.
Can you elaborate a bit more what you mean by this? Is the lack of this solidarity really caused by how our economy works? For me, it seems more intuitive that the lack of such solidarity is in general caused by a lack of interpersonal relationships and links between the vast majority of humanity. As you said:
I totally agree with this. Even the most hateful people have shown that they can change their views about groups they hate if they just spend some time together. But how can such solidarity be built between complete strangers who will never meet each other? Can changing the economic system really be enough for this?
I'm not who you're replying to, but maybe I can take a stab at answering your question.
The way I see it, under capitalism, people are encouraged to see each other as competitors - business owners are placed in competition with each other for market share, and workers are forced into competition with one another for work. Under capitalism, if you don't work, you don't eat. This sort of relationship is far from natural, and often brings out the worst in people.
On the other hand, the collective nature of work that has developed along with capitalism (for example, a whole bunch of people working together in a factory, on a construction site, or in an office, towards the production of a product or service) can - and does - exert an opposing influence in favour of working class solidarity as well.
Hope this helps, at least a bit!